Oliver prowled the lanai of his partner’s home on Molokai. Despite the vivid beauty of his surroundings, including flowering yellow and red hibiscus flanking the porch and an uninterrupted view of Pukoo Beach, he looked ready to erupt.
The two people watching him from the relative safety of a sea-grass sofa stacked with colorful pillows pretended to ignore him as they whispered quietly to each other from the comfort of their loose embrace. Sprawled in sleep at their feet were Kye’s Toller, named Lily, and Yardley’s Czech wolf dog, Oleg. At the moment they reflected the mellow mood of their handlers.
It was well known that Oliver hated regulations, delays, red tape—any and everything that interfered with his god-given right to go to hell any way he damn well pleased. Except that none of that was what was at the heart of his fury today.
“I’m not even a fuckin’ American citizen.”
Kye looked up from fondling his fiancée’s earlobe. “You could remedy that.”
Oliver glared at his partner. “At least in Oz we’ve got sane laws.”
“Did you get another court summons? I told you those speeding tickets add up. Next time, they may not allow you back in the country until you settle. And don’t even think about asking BARKS to post bail if you’re arrested.”
Oliver ignored his partner, pausing to stare out at the vista of Pukoo Beach. He’d just flown in this morning from Concepción, Chile, and had been looking forward to a few days off and a long bake on a beach. They’d done good work. Saved many lives and helped get supplies flowing. Now it was up to the crew he’d left in place to continue the work.
But he wasn’t looking at the water, or the huge black volcanic boulders that broke up the shallow waves and buttressed parts of the shore. Nor was he thinking this time about women in tiny bikinis. His whole focus was on the phone call he’d gotten hours earlier from a Detective Mullins of the Pinellas Park Police Department in Florida. Wherever the fuck that was.
Near Macayla. That much he knew. He’d called her, trying to find out what the hell was going on. But she must have turned off her ringer, or maybe her phone battery had run out because she hadn’t returned any of his calls. The longer she remained out of touch, the tenser he got.
Jackeroo was as stressed as his handler, pacing next to him and watching his every move.
Guilt stabbed Oliver. He and his partner needed downtime. But he was very much afraid neither of them was going to get it. Not until he knew what was going on with Macayla. Too bad he couldn’t explain that to a dog so faithful he matched his handler’s every emotion without knowing why.
Finally he turned and made a rude comment about lovers before blurting out, “I met a woman.”
Yardley yawned. “That’s not news.”
Oliver scowled at her unsympathetic reply. “I like her.”
Kye yawned, too, so simpatico, these lovers. “You ever met a woman you didn’t like?”
Oliver glowered. “The situation’s impossible.”
Yardley rolled a shoulder. “Isn’t it your philosophy that the best way to get over a bad relationship is to replace it with a new one? Immediately?”
The fact that it was true only further soured Oliver’s mood. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Shopping? Toe painting class?”
“No. She doesn’t.” Kye kissed his wife-to-be’s bare shoulder. “She’s right where she belongs.”
Oliver stared at them as they made kissy faces. It was awful. Sad, really. Where was Kye’s dignity? His cojones? His pride?
The diamond on the third finger of Yardley’s left hand winked in answer. Their happiness was more than a grown man should have to endure.
Oliver wheeled away toward the exit. “I’m off then. Got to get away from the wedding cooties lousing up this place.”
Yardley smiled. “Jealous, Kelly?”
That brought him up short. “Me? Do I look jealous?”
“You sound as pissy as a wet hen. Who ruffled your feathers? I’d like to meet her.”
Oliver gave it a beat. He liked Yardley, most of the time. She and her dog could hold their own with any K-9 team in the world. In fact, she had trained a fair number of them. But right now she was twisting a very pissed-off tiger’s tail. None of the retorts running through his mind would be easily forgotten, or forgiven, if they got past his lips. And he really didn’t want to have to patch up another problem.
Finally, all that came out was, “Huh.”
“No need to run off. We’ll leave you to steam up the afternoon alone.” Kye stood and stretched. “I’m thinking a nap in a hammock is just what I need.”
Yardley stood, too, and gave him a small intimate smile. “I’ll come with you.”
Despite his temper, Oliver took a second to admire his best friend’s fiancée. Strictly in a brotherly, platonic way. Or as close to it as his nature would allow. Yardley was a stunner. What man would pass up a chance to glance her way? Dressed as usual in jeans and a tailored shirt, she’d learned this past year to go barefoot when not working, a concession to the sand that was a part of life on an island. Tall with a mane of unusual dark-red hair, Yardley had the black eyes and high cheekbones that were traits of her Native American heritage. She and Kye shared a history that went back further than his and Kye’s. But only in the last year had they found each other again. Yeah. Maybe he was a bit jealous of that kind of emotional connection. But the awareness was so new he didn’t know what to do with it. All he knew was that it was tied up with meeting Macayla. And that he had a problem he had no clue about solving.
Kye started to walk past him but Oliver shoulder-checked him.
“What?”
“We need to talk.” He said it so low the words were no more than a growl.
Kye looked past Oliver to where Yardley was disappearing down the cool dark hallway toward their bedroom, hips swaying in an invitation he’d thought one short year ago he’d been denied forever. He glanced back at the tight face of his best friend. “This better be good. And you’ve only got five minutes.”
“It’ll keep”—Oliver pointed—“the happy in your pants.”
“Yeah, it will.”
He saw a small smile play around his friend’s mouth as Kye glanced back down the hall. The boy had it bad. But then Kye had been looking for forever-after all along.
“Buy me a beer and I’m yours.”
Kye and Oliver were opposites in many ways, but equally compelling men. Kye was native Hawaiian, handsome in a dark-eyed, thick-muscled way. He looked like a Pacific Island statue, broad face, bold blunt blade of a nose, full sensuous mouth. He gave off a solid, dependable air. As if he could stand between Doomsday and the world, and everyone would believe he’d have a fighting chance. In reality, he was something of a goof, when he wanted to be. He was also the cool head, the deliberate leader, which made Oliver appreciate him in the field. When things got ugly, Kye was always good for a smile. But he was also the linchpin on whom the rest of the crew depended. He kept the books, did the hiring, made the speeches, paid the bills.
Oliver was the scout, the point man, the lead, the risk taker, the audacious Aussie with a ready smile and a pirate’s appreciation for rule breaking. He gave master classes in search and rescue, and he’d logged an impressive number of saves, some of them based on sheer grit more than calculation. When they’d met several years ago while working for other SAR companies, they discovered that their working styles fit like puzzle pieces, each one contributing to the greater good. That was because they understood and shared an appreciation for dogs, and what they could do.
They were dog men. Neither felt complete without their K-9 companions in sight. Kye’s expertise had been honed in the U.S. military K-9 forces, as Oliver’s had in the Australian armed forces. They knew discipline and the value of unshakable ethics, and what it cost to keep the world on its axis. Once they’d killed to defend the world. Now they dug in and tracked and trailed and searched to keep lost souls alive. It made them more than colleagues. It made them brothers. So they’d quit their employers and formed their own company, BARKS.
Oliver explained briefly about meeting Macayla. He even managed to hint at the fact that she’d been the one to get him to give the banquet speech. Not that he was going to own up to everything. Like the dyslexia. He and Kye were now friends for life, but they weren’t girlfriends. The competitive edge remained strong between them. It kept their bond fresh.
Oliver passed along one of the two beers he’d found before he ended with a palms-up shrug. “She’s different. Not really my type.”
“Flat-chested, no ass?”
“None of your goddamn business.” Oliver cracked a smile. “She’s cute.”
Kye nodded thoughtfully. “Cute works. Why not invite her over to the island for a few days?”
“She’s not that type of woman. She has a job, responsibilities she can’t leave.”
“Totally out of your league then.”
“Would you give it a rest? I’m trying to have an adult conversation.”
Kye grinned. “Touchy.”
Oliver pushed two hands through his hair, pulled a black hair band off his wrist, and twisted his hair up into a bun. “She’s got something about her. Total commitment to a piece-of-shit job that she’s really good at but it doesn’t pay well. Pet detective. You ever hear of anything like it?” Not waiting for Kye to reply, he went on. “She’s got this touch with animals. People, too. She talked me into getting on that stage. And I’m not easy to deal with. But she handled me. And I didn’t mind.”
“I’d have given my left nut to see that,” Kye inserted quietly, but his partner wasn’t paying attention. He was back to pacing.
“All those lost dogs, they like her. And she’s not just a softhearted dog lover. She’s got grit.” He bent down to love on Jackeroo, who had been growling low and nipping at his handler’s heels as if Oliver were a straying sheep who wouldn’t return to the fold.
“How did you meet?”
“On the beach. She was dumpster-diving to save a rat-faced overpampered pet. Thirty minutes later she tried to face down a couple of thugs destroying her car with baseball bats. Then she took on a bully over his treatment of neighbor dogs. That was all before lunch.” He was grinning. “Think what she could do with some training. She’d be perfect in SAR.”
Oliver stood up suddenly, looking as if he’d been struck by a eureka moment.
“So why doesn’t she have a dog of her own? That’s like a cardinal thing. No one who loves animals the way she does should be without one. You or me without a dog? We’d— Just wouldn’t happen.” He shook his head and began taking his hair down. “She needs a dog.”
Kye watched his friend with a stunned expression on his face. This was Oliver Kelly, talking about a woman in terms other than her healthy appreciation for sex, or availability. Here he was talking about the emotional needs of a woman that didn’t end with the solution of him being in her bed. Kye had been waiting their entire relationship for his friend to realize that he might need a woman in his life who wasn’t a buddy or a one-night stand.
But this was new and tender territory for Oliver. I told you so wasn’t going to cut it. Might even scare him off. Look how he was fussing with his hair. So not a Kelly move. Half the time he looked like a street person with better hygiene opportunities. Now he was messing with his hair like a teenager at the mall. The man was in deep.
Kye set his beer aside, thinking of a shadowed bedroom with a hammock for two. “What are you going to do?”
“I need to catch a flight.”
“Where?”
“Florida.”
“I’m asking why again because you’re scheduled to teach a sea search-and-rescue class over on the Big Island this weekend.”
Oliver hesitated, but he’d been jonesing to see Macayla again before the call from the police came in. Maybe it was just a ready excuse. See. This was why he didn’t do relationships. A man had to figure his emotional stuff out if he was in a relationship. And he didn’t do emotions. Yet all he had to do was think of Macayla and this little ache pulsed deep inside him. Yeah, he wanted to see her. For any reason.
“Macayla’s in trouble.”
Kye’s brows rose. “What kind of trouble?”
“She’s a suspect in a crime. That’s the vibe I got from the police when they called to ask me about her.”
“The police called you in Chile about a woman you met in Florida over a long weekend? Just how involved were you two?”
Oliver scowled at Kye. “I’m not sure how closely they’re looking at her, and I hope they’ve already ruled her out. I won’t know that until I talk to her, and she’s not answering her fuckin’ phone. That’s why I’m heading out.”
Kye’s surprise expanded. “What crime is she suspected of committing?”
“Theft. Dognapping.”
“The Pet Detective steals dogs?” Kye laughed. “Now, that sounds like an Oliver Kelly kind of woman.”
“Get stuffed, Kye.”
And, because they were friends, Kye pulled him into a quick chest-bump embrace and let him go. “I hope you can help her. If she needs you.”
Oliver nodded. “Thanks. I’m thinking I’ll bring her back here. For a visit. For a while.” He looked suddenly very nervous about voicing that protective thought. “She’s had a hard time, before this happened, and could use a break.”
“You do that.” Kye turned aside before his expression gave him away.
A few minutes later, Kye located Yardley in a hammock he’d hung in their bedroom. She was wearing the thinnest bit of feminine attire he’d ever seen. Those who knew Yardley would never believe it of her. Only he knew the secrets of the woman who could swear like a drill sergeant and make grown men quake in their boots if they made a mistake with one of her K-9s. But right now, all that mattered was that she was his. He was here to do the possessing.
He slid down beside her after dropping his shorts.
She welcomed him with open arms. “What’s with your friend this time?”
Kye told her quickly all that he could remember.
She pulled a face. “Serious then?”
“Sounds like.”
“Will wonders never cease.”
“Yep. Our boy’s fallen in love.”
“Does he know it?”
“Not yet. He thinks she needs a dog. At least he’s got the partnership part sorted. Should be fun to see how long it takes him to connect all the dots.”
“That was quick.”
“It can happen that way. He’s seen and done just about everything there is out there in the world. When the real thing comes along, there’s no mistaking it.”
Yardley reached up and kissed him. “Still, he’s known her, what, a few days?”
Kye pulled her down over him. “Oliver’s never been one to waste time, whatever he’s doing. Neither am I. Let’s do this.”